I've never watched rugby, but do they have a similar concept to offensive & defensive lines? That's where it seems most head injuries would happen if they got rid of helmets, not during open-field tackles.
Yes, they do, and in fact that is where rugby head injuries occur.
In fact, the equivalent of a football OL center is a "hooker" in rugby, and part of the game there is to learn which part of your head is the hardest so that you can headbutt your opponent.
I posted the article more for my jab at the "classic form tackle" argument than anything else.
It really is an impossible argument to make on both sides. In the first year of removing helmets, there'd be bloodied bodies all over the field until a different form of tackling caught on.
I played both football and rugby so I do have a good sense of the differences, and I know rugby players are taught to tackle differently. We were always taught to tackle on the side of the body away from the runner's direction. So, you always land on top of the runner, instead of underneath the runner, as I was taught in football. In football, I was taught to bring the runner down with my neck and shoulder, and tackling drills resulted in a thigh or leg landing on my neck and shoulder. In rugby it's the direct opposite.
But these two different tackling methods can't be seen outside the context of the game. In rugby you rarely get a direct hit on the runner because, one, there is so much passing, and two, there's no blocking, which means players mark their opponent and try to stay in the action as much as possible.
Let me give you an example of what happens to a bunch of former football players who take up rugby. We were all around 22-25 in age, former football players, we had played rugby for a couple years in the USA. We took a tour of Scotland and played Scottish teams, and all the Scots were smaller than us. Our backs were bigger than the Scottish pack. The match started and we were crushing the Scots with hard tackles all over the field. The Scots reported that they had never been hit so hard in all their years of playing. The scoreboard showed a different story. I remember the first game was a blowout, 40 or 50 odd points to 6 (this was back in the day when a try was worth 4 points and a kick worth 2). While we were tackling the runners harder than they had been hit before, the Scots were getting the ball out, stringing it down the line, and popping big runs for points. When you tackle a rugby player hard American style, you take him out of the play--but you also take yourself out of the play. If the ball gets out to the wing (as it will do in rugby when the defenders are on the ground after hard tackles) the offense will score easily after overlaps. This means that in rugby the idea is to get your opponent down in such a way that will allow you--the tackler--to pop up immediately and chase the ball down the line. if you're tackling hard, you are doing your team a disservice.
It is literally impossible to say what would happen if they went to no helmets or padded helmets in the NFL. You'd also need to get rid of shoulder pads.
I would try it on a semi-pro level, perhaps bring back the padded leatherheads to begin with.
There is something to be said about the article though. Before facemasks, there was much less high sticking in hockey. Equipment allows players to play differently. Hockey is proof of this.
Maybe they should just really get rid of HGH and steroids by testing all players weekly.
